This year’s OpenText Enterprise World 2013 Enterprise Information Management Conference will have a few new twists. As conference organizers say, it’s all about hosting a conversation -- what does enterprise information mean today, and what is its future?

EIM Questions to be Asked

IT and business leaders will convene in Orlando, FL, in November, along with thought leaders and OpenText’s team. They will explore those questions and look for insights and opportunities to go further. How can you use the power of information to create new business models, transform your business, uncover new opportunities and grow new markets?

In addition to familiar product tracks, the conference organizers are hailing a new innovation track. It will be a series of hands-on sessions -- they are described as “war games for business” to address the “future of and the notion of enterprise information,” said Deb Lavoy, director of strategic marketing for OpenText (and a CMSWire columnist).

“What does it mean, and where are we going with this? We’re not suggesting we are the only ones with the answers. We are suggesting that what we need to do as an ecosystem is to get together and have a conversation.”

Major Conference Changes

According to Lavoy, the conference features some significant changes from years past:

The tone of the conference will be a bit different, Lavoy said. The conference will include a mix of technical offerings with philosophical, forward-thinking conversations.

“Techie Tuesday” will feature deeper technical conversations for those interested in the high-level technology discussions. “They’ll be even deeper than before,” Lavoy said. “Because we’ve added this day, we can still have more business and sort of future-oriented discussions as well.”

Product tracks. As in the past, there are five product tracks that align with the five product “Pillars” at OpenText: Enterprise Content Management, Business Process Management, Customer Experience Management, Information Exchange and Discovery. This year each track will be anchored by keynotes and panels of industry leaders, which they hope will be a catalyst for some thoughtful back-and-forth.

An innovation track debuts in order to “gather people to work on hard challenges,” said Lavoy, who will moderate the four sessions in this track alongside of Joyce Hostyn, director of customer experience at OpenText. “It’s not a product-focused conversation and not an OpenText conversation, but rather one about the future of enterprise information.”

Innovation Track Breakdown

The four breakout sessions in the innovation track are limited to 25 attendees each and will include:

Inventing a One-page Information Enterprise Strategy: Is it possible to describe a strategy this important on one page? Why would you want to? How might you use it? How can you sell it your executives?

Exploring Information Flows: How does information flow through your enterprise? Create to consume, issue to resolution, capture to archive -- what flows matter to you? How might you map information as it flows across organizational silos, channels and systems? How can you use these flows to identify innovation opportunities and grow the business?

Thriving through Disruption: How Can an Information Enterprise Face Unknown Futures? We are all familiar with the mobile, social, cloud disruptions of recent years. But what’s next? We don’t know, but the internet of everything is one real possibility.

Build the Information Enterprise with a Responsive Workforce: Maturing your ability to connect employees with each other, with information and with customers can change everything. How can you build deeper intimacy between your workforce and information? How can you harness information, technology and design to create a digitally empowered workforce? How can you harness resistance to change to aid in the transformation of your workforce?

“CIOs and their teams are in a really tough position because they are among the first people to recognize that the strategic value of information has changed,” Lavoy said. “They need to be excellent tactically for their organizations, but they also need to be more strategic. … The stuff they need to deal with is intense. … They need to be able to build robust systems but also systems that are extremely agile and are ready to evolve. We want IT and business architects and strategists in the room for this exercise.”

As Hostyn said, “We are determined to make it a memorable experience.”

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